<nettime> BIO-IPR & BioLinux

[Soenke Zehle <soenke.zehle@web.de>]

I know that the BIO-IPR discussion has died already, but maybe this will be
of interest regardless. As you know (readers of SARAI), it happened: the
term "BioLinux" has made its appearance in the Bio-IPR controversy. And then
there was that NYT article on growing disenchantment with the effect of new
regimes of proprietarization on even the tiniest biological sample and thus
its effects on "open source" science.
SZ


K. Ravi Srinivas, "The Case for Biolinuxes and Other Pro-Commons
Innovations", Sarai Reader 2002: The Cities of Everyday Life, Sarai,
Delhi, pp. 321-328. (Proposes that the GNU General Public Licence system for
open source computer software be applied in plant breeding, to keep farmers'
varieties in the public domain and support further innovation.)
http://www.sarai.net/journal/02PDF/10infopol/09biolinux.pdf
or download from the main page: http://www.sarai.net/journal/reader2.html
(under "Politics of Information")


Andrew C. Revkin, "Biologists Sought a Treaty - Now They Fault It", New York
Times, 7 May 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/07/science/earth/07TREA.html?tntemail0
(available for free for 30 days only)

NEW YORK TIMES

May 7, 2002

Biologists Sought a Treaty; Now They Fault It
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

A  treaty enacted nine years ago to conserve and exploit the diversity of
species on earth is seriously impeding biologists' efforts to catalog and
comprehend that same natural bounty, many scientists say.

They say the treaty has spawned paralyzing biological bureaucracies built on
the widespread belief that any scientist collecting samples — whether for a
drug company or a dissertation — is bent on stealing genetic material and
making a fortune.

As a result, biologists say, in many tropical regions it is easier to cut a
forest than to study it.

"Something that was well intentioned and needed has been taken to an
illogical extreme," said Dr. Douglas C. Daly, a curator of Amazonian botany
at the New York Botanical Garden, who has worked in Brazil for 20 years in
partnerships with Brazilian scientists, but recently had to wait a year and
a half for a new research visa.

"The net result has been that it's kept biologists out of the forests," Dr.
Daly said. "That plays into the hands of the forces of uncontrolled
development. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no biologist there to
hear it, it definitely doesn't make a sound."

Some officials in restrictive countries have begun to concede as much. For
example, Brazil, which in 2000 stopped all exports of biological samples,
even to Brazilians working abroad, has convened a National Council of
Genetic Resources charged with finding a way to resume controlled exchanges.

The parties to the treaty, the Convention on Biological Diversity, met last
month in The Hague and adopted voluntary guidelines aimed at distinguishing
between "bio-prospecting" and basic science. But the parties, numbering 183,
have yet to negotiate the details, and even after they are complete, signers
are free to maintain existing rules.

The United States was involved in the talks, and the Clinton administration
signed the treaty. But the Senate, lobbied by agriculture and drug
companies, has never approved it. The Bush administration is reviewing
whether to pursue ratification.

Scientists and some officials from restrictive countries agree that the
solution is a regulatory system that is more streamlined for scientists who
cede any right to profit from their findings. But creating such a system may
be nearly impossible, because many universities, botanical gardens and other
research institutions, besides conducting basic studies, also seek to
exploit discoveries and, sometimes, have partnerships with drug companies.

In many countries, the fight against what is called biopiracy has proved
politically popular, linking the interests of conservative nationalists,
indigenous tribes and antiglobalization groups. In the hinterlands, the
police and, sometimes, rural villagers have detained or chased out
scientists.

Over the decades, there have been just enough examples of furtive
expropriation of natural resources to fuel such fears, scientists say. Those
include Brazil's loss of its rubber monopoly to Britain in the 19th
century — rubber trees thrived in British-controlled Malaysia — to recent
efforts by some companies to commercialize substances from tropical plants
and animals without seeking permission or paying royalties.

Some countries are so eager to thwart biological thievery that they are
going beyond the vague terms in the treaty.

At a meeting in February in Cancún, Mexico, representatives of Brazil,
China, India, Mexico and nine other countries — together controlling perhaps
70 percent of the world's biological diversity — formed the Group of Allied
Mega-Biodiverse Nations. The coalition would, among other activities,
certify "the legal possession of biological material" and negotiate terms to
transfer it.

Existing and proposed restrictions in countries with biological resources
are all aimed at controlling research by drug and biotechnology companies.
But evidence has grown that they are harming the most basic field work, even
observational studies of wildlife in which nothing is taken away. The
restrictions not only affect northern scientists' probing southern forests,
but also local scientists.

Dr. Ricardo Callejas, a professor at the University of Antioquia in
Medellín, Colombia, specializes in the 2,000 species in the black pepper
family. Dr. Callejas said fears of biological theft seemed particularly
intense in South America, adding that it was "much, much easier to get
permits for collecting in the Philippines and Vietnam" than in Colombia.

His discipline is taxonomy, basic analysis of the subtle differences among
species and a field with little commercial appeal. Even so, Dr. Callejas
said, he and his graduate students had been accused of biopiracy and booted
from one village while on a collecting trip. He added that he longed to
collect in a dizzyingly rich area in western Colombia, the Choco forests,
but that the treaty had made the effort impossible.

"If you request a permit," Dr. Callejas said, "you have to provide
coordinates for all sites to be visited and have to have the approval from
all the communities that live in those areas. Otherwise, go back to your
home and watch on Discovery Channel the new exciting program on dinosaurs
from Argentina. I am still waiting after 14 months for a permit for
collecting in Choco."

Delays, fees and research restrictions in countries like Brazil and
provinces like Sarawak, the Malaysian part of Borneo, have caused many
scientists simply to abandon the critical, difficult work of charting the
still largely unexplored maze of species.

In some cases, scientists have been detained and their collections
destroyed. In the Brazilian Amazon in 1998, an American geographer studying
the forest for hints of ancient cultivation methods was placed under house
arrest by the federal police in Santarem, and his boat, equipment and
samples were seized.

The scientist, Joseph M. McCann, who now teaches at the New School for
Social Research in Manhattan, had all the appropriate permits and visas. He
said that he eventually got back his gear and the title to his old
riverboat, but that most of the collection of pressed plants rotted because
the police had stored it outside. The plants had been destined for a
Brazilian herbarium, not a pharmaceutical laboratory, he said.

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers have been affected most of
all, from both developing countries and from the North.

At the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, André M. Amorim, a visiting
botany professor from the State University of Santa Cruz in Bahia, Brazil,
has had trouble completing his doctoral research because of the ban on
shipping even the tiniest leaf fragment.

His work focuses on Brazilian lianas and related vines and shrubs, and it
requires advanced molecular and genetic analysis using equipment in New
York.

"This is a real problem when Brazilian researchers are working in other
countries," Mr. Amorim said.

In some places, restrictions have forced biologists to pack up and leave or
to avoid the least-studied regions like the Amazon, where the classification
of species lags, and focus on more accessible places like Hawaii or Puerto
Rico.

In Sarawak, Dr. Navjot S. Sodhi of the National University of Singapore
abandoned a project to survey the bird species in several national parks
after tighter research restrictions took effect in 1998.

"Sarawak is the best place on earth to work, because there's so much rain
forest left and the people are so nice," Dr. Sodhi said. "They provided free
workers to help us, and we trained them in return and hired local guides. We
were only collecting blood samples from birds to look for parasites and also
collecting bird feces to study their diets."

But word spread that a potential AIDS drug had been discovered in the
region. New rules greatly complicated his program, he said. "Now, to collect
bird feces we had to get an export permit."

Officials began harassing his students.

"I couldn't take the nonsense any more, and we pulled out," Dr. Sodhi said.
"I was willing to sign anything saying that we were not doing any
bioprospecting."

But there was nothing to sign.

Officials at some companies that are sifting ecosystems for potential
profits say it is appropriate that scientists from universities and other
academic institutions play by the same tight rules.

"Academics have been kind of naïve to the question of ownership of genetic
material," said Eric J. Mathur, senior director for molecular diversity at
Diversa, a company in San Diego that works around the world to find enzymes
and other substances that could make valuable drugs or other products. "They
think that under the guise of academia they can do whatever they want. But
if their work results in any kind of invention — and most come
serendipitously — you can be sure their institution will want to own it and
make money from it."

Mr. Mathur said that the last year or so had finally seen the biodiversity
convention "start to come of age." In a growing number of countries, he
said, the general precepts of the convention have translated into workable
contracts that, for the first time, clarify who owns what and how any
benefits will be shared.

But many scientists and some officials say there is clearly the need for a
system with two tracks, to separate and simplify work that clearly has no
commercial application.

The impetus for the treaty, scientists note ruefully, arose largely from
biologists, who in the late 1980's powerfully promoted the notion that rain
forests could turn out to be medicine chests for the world. But the promise
has rarely turned into profits, with just a handful of drugs and products
reaching markets.

"It's never really panned out and was totally oversold," said Dr. George
Amato, director of the conservation genetics program at the Bronx Zoo.

Dr. Amato's program has frequently been stymied in helping foreign
researchers identify animal species and strains through using genetic
analysis, because no material can be sent abroad. In one such effort, aimed
at identifying a strain of yellow-headed Amazon parrots, the DNA ended up
being tracked down in a stuffed museum specimen.

The worst side effect of the biology restrictions, many experts say, is that
young researchers are being driven away from important ecosystems and fields
of study.

In 1999, Christiane Ehringhaus, a German botanist pursuing a doctorate at
Yale, was teaching Brazilian students and studying plants in the state of
Acre in the Brazilian Amazon when newspapers implied that she was collecting
seeds and insights from indigenous people in pursuit of potential drugs.

Although she is still in Acre, Ms. Ehringhaus said the resulting
difficulties had prompted her to abandon botany altogether and shift to
social and economic studies.

"First," she said, "they drove me completely away from medicinal plants and
now from plants, period."

Prof. John H. Barton of the Stanford Law School, an expert on the
biodiversity treaty, said the biggest weakness in the pact was its focus on
biology as property. "It is much more about sharing the profits from genetic
resources than it is about conserving biodiversity, about science,"
Professor Barton said.

Around the world, that focus has translated into warped expectations and
suspicions, Dr. Callejas said in Colombia.

"I have trouble convincing my closest friends that what I do is because of
passion, curiosity, a desire to know more about a group of organisms," he
said.

Everyone around him, he added, is convinced, with all the talk of property
rights and miracle drugs, that it is about money.

"The convention," Dr. Callejas said, has produced a "distorted view of what
science is and who scientists are. And so now, we are the problem, not the
solution."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company 

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